Olympic Heights Reflects On Eventful First Year

The girls` volleyball team makes it to the state finals in Tampa. Sounds of construction hum over the school bell that signals class changes.

Students from different communities converge at a brand new school. Skirmishes create tension on campus.

Two principals come and go in one school year. The cheerleading squad wins at a competition.

These are all pieces of the portrait of the first year at Olympic Heights High School on Lyons Road west of Boca Raton.

The events could make ``a tale of two campuses.``

But the worst of times seemed to garner the most attention: incomplete buildings and fights among students.

``If we had opened the school under normal circumstances, we probably would have been in better shape,`` said head football coach Ray Buscemi, who looks forward to better results from his team next year, when athletics fields are expected to be completed.

The team, which managed to win the homecoming game, had to use Omni Middle School facilities for most of the season.

``It was not a good situation,`` he said.

Besides the playing fields, construction areas included the cafeteria, gymnasium and vocational classrooms, contributing to the mayhem at the school.

District officials had debated whether to open the school or wait until it was finished.

Schools Superintendent Monica Uhlhorn said the construction problems led to other problems at the school.

``If I was to look back on the situation, I probably would have handled it differently,`` Uhlhorn said. ``We were up against leaving the kids at Spanish River in an overcrowded situation or trying to move them into Olympic Heights.``

Two principal changes affected the school, too, Uhlhorn said. The school opened with William Goode, but his December retirement brought along John Munroe.

The retiring Munroe will be succeeded by the school`s third principal, who should be named at the Wednesday School Board meeting.

School officials hope the summer break will be a time of healing and repair.

Construction workers are expected to finish the campus by the beginning of the next school year.

``Now that there is a break, we do not have the interference of students or us being an interference to them,`` said project manager Ray Heckman.

``It has been frustrating because we have seen Dwyer completed, and we had hoped that we could get things finished on this end,`` Heckman said.

William Dwyer High School in Palm Beach Gardens and Olympic Heights are prototype schools, both from the same new design and started at the same time.

Along with construction delays, the first year was marred by fights.

A 14-year-old freshman was attacked by several students who were looking for another student to fight.

The attack followed two one-on-one fights that occurred at the school earlier that week.

In another incident, students from another school came onto the campus and started a fight with Olympic Heights students.

Later on, 20 students on a physics club field trip were caught with merchandise stolen from gift shops at Busch Gardens in Tampa. There were suspensions, but no criminal charges.

``The birth pains of this school came at a very bad time,`` said Esther Simmons, whose daughter will be a junior at Olympic Heights this coming school year.

Pervis Henderson, who will be a junior in the fall, said some of the fights were racial, but mainly they were just differences between students.

``It was kind of bad, but it has gotten better,`` Henderson said.

Tim Goelz, who will be a junior next school year, said there was more to the first year of the school than the publicized fights.

Goelz pointed out that the Future Business Leaders of America club won eight trophies at a competition.

``I thought that was great for a first-year school,`` he said.

Goelz said he hopes that future students do not come to the school with negative misconceptions.

``This is not such a bad school,`` he said.

Simmons acknowledged there were some highs and lows inherent in being the first students on a new campus.

``The disadvantage was that they did not inherit a school with history or a legacy to follow after,`` she said. ``But they had the advantage to be pioneers.``

OLYMPIC HEIGHTS

-- OPENED: August 1991.

-- LOCATION: 20101 Lyons Road, west of Boca Raton.

-- ENROLLMENT: 1,054 students in ninth through 11th grades. (New high schools do not have a senior class the first year.)

-- CAPACITY: 1,807 students.

-- RACIAL BALANCE:

White non-Hispanic: 800, or 75.9 percent.

Black non-Hispanic: 142, or 13.5 percent.

Hispanic: 89, or 8.4 percent.

Asian/Pacific Islander: 23, or 2.2 percent.

-- ADMINISTRATION: A new principal is expected to be named at the School Board meeting on Wednesday. The new principal will replace John Munroe, who retired at the end of this past school year. Munroe replaced Bill Goode, who opened the school and then retired in December.